Summary: The Identity project emerged as a result of our dissatisfaction at the nature of the debate that was emerging on the area of digital governance in India.Over the past three years we have conducted numerous field visits in seven Indian states.These visits include numerous video-conversations, some short and others very long, with a diverse number of those who were involved with this entire process of participating in the emergence of a digital ecosystem of governance. These are interviews with people being enrolled into the Aadhaar programme, with district-level Panchayat and other officials, with numerous State government bureaucrats, with private enrollment representatives, representatives of various governmental services, with operators and other members of this digital workforce. Conversations are often long, spontaneous and deliberately unstructured: and the focus is mainly on a vérité style using amateur video.Some key issues that we shortlisted for detailed inquiry were issues of migrants, both domestic and across international borders, homelessness in cities, and the financially excluded. Each of these areas was discussed in considerable detail at major public consultations held in Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Bangalore, in partnership with the CSDS, the Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, and the Urban Research and Policy Programme Initiative of the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore. All videos of all presentations made at these events are also available here.CSCS also has an extensive text archives of material on the field as a whole, available on http://eprints.cscsarchives.org.

Clip Summary: Interview with a female resident of Uttar Majlishpur, a village, 20 Km north of Agartala, towards Assam. Here she speaks about her work under the NREGA job scheme, the owning and operating of a bank account and the use of the smart card for receiving payments. She also mentions her enrolment into Aadhaar, claiming that it will provide her with a permanent identification.

Interviewer: What work do you do here?
Speaker: Cultivation.

Interviewer: What kind of farming?
Speaker: Grain.

Interviewer: Have you been the same house for a long time now? Since how many years?
Speaker: *Local dialect*
Interviewer: Do you have the NREGA job card?
Speaker: Yes.
Interviewer: What kind of work do you do?
Speaker: **** construction, building foundations, road work.

Interviewer: do you have a bank account?
Speaker: Yes.
Interviewer: Which bank?
Speaker: Moonpur Grameen bank.

Interviewer: Do you use it, by yourself?
Speaker: Yes. I do it myself.
Interviewer: Do you have the bank passbook for your account?
Speaker: I also have the biometric card.
Interviewer: So you use the card?
Speaker: Yes.

Interviewer: DO you use it once a week?
Speaker: Yes.
Interviewer: For what purpose? To deposit or to withdraw money?
Speaker: For both. When needed I withdraw otherwise the money stays there.

Interviewer: Why? How do you think you'll benefit?
Speaker: It'll be useful in the future. It is good to have this document. I don't have a passport or anything. Like having a ration card or an ID card, I also have Aadhaar now.
Interviewer: You have a ration card?
Speaker: Yes.
Interviewer: Now you'll have an Adhaar card.
Speaker: Yes.

Interviewer: The NREGA wages are deposited in the bank. How?
Speaker: ****
Interviewer: You have enrolled in the UID and got the Adhaar card, no?
Speaker: Yes.

Interviewer: Do you go to Agartala? To the city?
Speaker: Yes.
Interviewer: How many members are in your family?
Speaker: 3 people.